MacDonnell Douglas was primarily a defense contractor with a long record of subpar performance and technical failures in the service of those contracts. At the time of 'merger' with Boeing in 1997, the not-very-exclusively internal joke a was that MD used Boeing's own funds to acquire Boeing; and the years since have proven the truth in this perspective. Boeing went from being an Engineer led company which produced superior equipment, to being a Management led company which produces shareholders, and which has fully reformed to the MD model of Washington centered, defense industry, lowest bid and highest level of 'acceptable failures' in both the defense and commercial product markets. More lives will continue to be lost in a calculus of least cost risk mitigation.
